From Ricky Munday

I just wanted to give you an update on the progress of our preparations for our Africa 3 Peaks expedition in aid of Kenya Children's Home, where I have been working for the past 4 months.

Ally arrived on sunday night. Things are going well. We're just getting the final items of kit from our kit sponsors, who have really helped us reduce our costs with a great sponsorship deal on kit.

In addition, Brian Gibson's financial support through Gibson Pension and Investments has meant that we have been able to plan in the knowledge that we will not put ourselves in thousands of pounds of debt to get this expedition up-and-running.

Ally held a successful Ladies Day fundraiser a couple of weeks back and our online fundraising has so far resulted in over 3,000 GBP in donations that have already gone straight to the Balcraig Foundation. The funds that we have raised offline via sponsors and fundraisers will be distributed once we nett our costs.

Scott inglis (Glasgow Hawks team manager) raised around 400 GBP via Clydebank High School pupils who held two fundraisers. This money is being used to carry out essential maintenance work on one of the Houses here at the Home. In addition, they have donated a batch of pens and stationery and have written letters to the kids at the Home.

Without this level of support from everyone the expedition would simply not have been possible and we wouldn't have been able to raise the funds that we have so far. We just hope that people comtinue to support us now that the expedition draws near. In the last couple of days, I have been busy negotiating with the relevant park authorities and some useful contacts here in nairobi to try to reduce our logistical costs to the bare minimum, which is frustrating but vital.

It looks like we will now be leaving on the evening of the 14th to head to uganda. We now expect to reach the summit of Mt. Stanley on 20th October. We are going to get absolutely soaked in the Rwenzori mountains as late october is the wettest part of the year and the route we follow is through steep and slippery paths for the trek to Mt. Stanley. The climb itself is over snow and glaciers and will be a good first test of our fitness and ability to operate in a challenging environment. We are planning to carry all our own food and equipment, although I am still negotiating this with the park authorities as they normally have a fixed price for the circuit and normally insist on two porters per person, which would detract from the experience for us.

We then expect to return to nairobi late on the 23rd and drive north to mount kenya early on 24th. We expect to reach the highest trekking summit on 26th and the following day attempt the north face standard route on Batian, the highest summit on mount kenya. As this approaches and becomes real, we are starting to feel real fear. It's going to be incredibly challenging for all of us. We expect to be climbing for more than 10 hours and will start our ascent well before dawn to give us the best chance of success.

In discussion with the most experienced climber on the team (Iain Mackay) he has suggested that if the route was at sea level he would be reasonably confident about leading it if conditions were good but add 5000m altitude and possibly some wind and a dusting of snowthen he thinks the chances of success are 50:50. Therefore we will engage the services of a technical guide. The chances are that it will also be wet so it will make this ascent very hairy indeed.

We will return to nairobi again on 28th for the night and the following morning we will transfer to tanzania for the ascent of kiilimanjaro. Again, I am still in discussion with the park authorities for special pemission to climb Kili in only 3 days and 2 nights. The normal schedule is a minimum of 6 days and 5 nights to allow for proper acclimatisation. We intend to summit on 1st november and return to nairobi on the 2nd.

In terms of fitness, I spent last weekend trekking and camping in Aberdares National Park with a full pack. We covered 20km per day at around 3,000m, which should stand me in good stead. I've been running laps round the field here at the Home and have been running 10km in about 43 minutes so my fitness is coming along nicely. Ally had a successful week in the swiss alps and now has the basics for using ropes, ice axe, crampons etc. We'll hopefully get away for a day while he's here either to rock-climb in Hell's Gate National Park or climb Mt. Longonot in the Rift Valley.

Hopefully this gives you a flavour of how our preparations are going. Thanks for all your support. We intend to post updates and photos after each mountain on our expedition website:

www.kilts2kenya.com

Many thanks,

Ricky.

This article was posted on 8-Oct-2008, 08:02 by Hugh Barrow.